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Please describe, in detail, any scientific research projects or other relevant scholarly work in which you have been involved. Includethe names and affiliations of your research mentor and others with whom you have worked. List any publications, abstracts, or presentationsthat resulted from your work.Undergraduate Research Assistant: During the last Spring semester of my Junior year at the University X, I attended the Computer Architecture I research project, supervised by Dr. E F. I and my partner, A. O, were responsible for developing a C programming language tutorial session of the online Wikipedia Lecture Reference for Computer Architecture I: Basic Computer Organization and Design course. Besides exposing students with a new programming language, Dr. F believed that by accompanying C programming language with basic computer architecture material would aid student learning and understanding. That semester was the second time the course was taught as such, and was much an experimental semester. The semester was divided into two parts. The first part of the semester focused on introducing the concept of C programming language and Linux environment while the second part concentrated on assembly language, a low-level programming language that is a symbolic representation of commands given to the Central Processing Unit or CPU.As a research assistant, my responsibility was to attend lectures, researched online C programming tutorials, prepared and rewrote them according to the course material on Wikipedia. The tutorial would then be reviewed by one or two graduate students and lastly Dr. F before getting published. The idea of putting the tutorial on Wikipedia is because we wanted to provide open access to nationwide university professors and students. Undergraduate Research Assistant: The following Summer semester, I participated in the Eupryma Scolopes Uniform Inherited Distribution Simulation (E-SQUIDS) research project, which was supervised by Dr. S R of University X and Dr. M N of the State University. E-SQUIDS, a multidisciplinary research project, intended to develop a prediction tool that would aid the study of Hawaiian Bobtail Squid in relationship with its light-producing bacteria, Vibrio fischeri. The software simulated the population growth of the two species over time for particular starting criteria such as original population, monitoring time, temperature for example. It then would analyze, correlate and estimate their future populations and display them accordingly. This software was created in C++ at UTEP’s computer science laboratory. The developing team comprised of myself and two other members, A F and M A. We were responsible for designing, creating, testing and maintaining the software based on data collected from Dr. N’s biology lab. I also contributed in researching and composing of the first two draft papers that were intended to compare our findings with other published population models. My participation with the research ended when I left for the National Student Exchange (NSE) program at the end of my junior summer. The E-SQUIDS research ended before I finished the NSE program due to different technical issues.Outcome: One of the important lessons I learned through my research experience concerned team communication and male-female differences in workplace. Being the only girl in the E-SQUIDS team, I felt disconnected from and disrespected by others. One instance was that my partner kept browsing the web when we were discussing the project. Since I attended the project after them, I felt that I should adapt to their routine. However, I believed it should rather be a team effort instead of my own. This led to overwhelming feelings accumulating inside me. Before I left for the NSE program, I decided to talk to them face-to-face about my feelings. They appeared to be careless as one of my partners continued browsing the web during the conversation. My lesson taught me that team conflict needed to be addressed at the early stage. Through my short experience with the project, although encountering bad feelings, I find that I enjoy doing research. I am attracted by the idea that I could have impact on many lives by conducting research as well as the intellectual challenges it presents.

Last edited by mimilovemum; 30-Jan-2010 at 08:11.
Reason: Confidential information